Bottlenose Dolphin
Tursiops truncatus
The dolphin everyone pictures — and one that answers to its own name.
When people say dolphin, this is usually the one they mean: grey, curious, and always looking as if it's smiling. Dolphins are small toothed whales, which makes the bottlenose a close cousin of the orca. It hunts with sound, it can live for more than 60 years, and each one has a whistle of its own that the others use like a name.
On the conservation status
Least Concern worldwide on the IUCN Red List. Some coastal groups are small and in trouble, though: in the United States, five along the Atlantic coast are officially listed as depleted.
- Length
- 2–4 m (6–13 ft)
- Weight
- 135–635 kg (300–1,400 lb)
- Lifespan
- 40–60 years; females live longer
- Diet
- Fish, squid, crabs and shrimp
- Nursing
- About 20 months
- Family
- Dolphins — the orca's family
The good stuff.
A whistle for a name
In its first months, every bottlenose dolphin develops its own signature whistle. Other dolphins copy it to call that one dolphin, and when a dolphin hears its own whistle played back, it answers. It works a lot like a name.
Seeing with sound
A dolphin sends out fast clicks and listens for the echoes. From them it can tell how far away a fish is and how big it is, and it can even find fish hiding under the sand.
Asleep and awake
A dolphin has to decide to breathe, so it can't fall completely asleep. Instead it rests one half of its brain at a time, keeping the other half awake enough to swim and come up for air.
Sponges as gloves
In Shark Bay, Australia, some dolphins carry a sea sponge on their beak to protect it while they dig for fish on the rough sea floor. Calves learn the trick from their mothers.
A long childhood
A calf is born after about 12 months, nurses for about 20 months, and stays with its mother for 3 to 6 years, learning where the food is and how to catch it.
Mirror, mirror
Dolphins are one of very few animals that seem to recognise themselves in a mirror. Marked with a spot of ink, they twist and turn in front of it to get a look at the mark.
Wait, really?
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The bottle nose is its short, thick beak. The round bump behind it is the melon, full of fat, which helps focus the clicks it hunts with.
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Nicklo, the oldest wild dolphin ever known, lived in Sarasota Bay in Florida and was last seen in 2017, aged 67.
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Scientists in Sarasota Bay have followed the same dolphin families since 1970 — the longest study of wild dolphins anywhere.
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Dolphins swallow fish whole and head first, so the spines don't catch in their throats.
What it sounds like
Whistles, clicks and squeaks. Each dolphin has its own signature whistle, and fast bursts of clicks are how it finds food, even in murky water.
We haven't found a recording we're allowed to share yet, so for now this one is a description.
Where you might see one
The Gulf of California around La Paz and Loreto, Sarasota Bay and the rest of Florida's coast, Scotland's Moray Firth, and Shark Bay in Western Australia.
The trouble
- Getting tangled in fishing nets and lines
- Chemical pollution that builds up in their bodies
- People feeding them, which teaches them to beg near boats
- Boat strikes and noise
One real thing
If you meet wild dolphins, enjoy them from a distance, and never feed them or chase them. Dolphins that learn to beg hang around boats and fishing lines, and that's where they get hurt.
More ways to helpYour field notes
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